


Score of a Lifetime

by Fanforthefics (StormDancer)



Series: Hockey Tumblr Oneshots [9]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thieves, Commitment Issues Galore, Friends With Benefits, Leverage AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 00:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormDancer/pseuds/Fanforthefics
Summary: Sid might be a myth, the best at what he does, but Geno’s only not a myth because he doesn’t want to be, and he’s the best thief in the world.





	Score of a Lifetime

**Author's Note:**

> For the sidgeno fluff fest prompt, "travel". Of course went sideways into a ~leverage AU, because why not? 
> 
> Don't know anything about anyone, don't own rights to anything, etc etc. Enjoy!

The bar in Madrid is precisely the kind of bar Geno likes—glittering. It has shiny chrome accents, the flashing lights catch on gold and metallics, the partiers’ jewels shine and twinkle temptingly. Geno loves these sorts of places, even if he doesn’t take advantage of the bounty in front of him. There are people in his line of work, he knows, who do it just for the greed, but he’s never been one of them. What’s the point of winning if the game’s too easy?

So instead of making his way through the crowd and slipping some of those pretty jewels into his pocket, he sits at the bar and watches. He likes feeling like he belongs here. It feels like winning.

He feels, more than sees, the barstool next to him being filled, and smiles into his martini, sharp and satisfied. He’d thought today might end like this.

“That,” Sid says, leaning against the bar, “Was beautiful.”

Geno resists the urge to preen. Instead, he steals a glance at the man next to him. If Geno makes it a point to fit in at places like this, Sid looks painfully out of place, in his mediocre suit—like he couldn’t afford the finest tailors in Italy; like his body didn’t deserve the finest suits to show it off—and the stiffness of his back. At least he forwent his usual ballcap. He looks like someone who wouldn’t even think to aspire to a place like this—or at least, if you don’t look close enough.

If you look close enough, to the confident set of his shoulders and the steady, knowingly look in his eye—then, though, you knew. Sidney doesn’t belong in places like this. Sidney owns places like this.

But it wouldn’t do to tell him that, so instead, Geno takes a slow sip of his drink. “I thought you might be watching,” he says, casual. Like that thought hadn’t fizzed down the back of his neck the whole time he was on the job—not distracting, but sharpening. Like another jolt of adrenaline.

“I know.” Sidney smiles again, pleased. “You have a buyer, yet?”

“Not sure I’m going to sell,” Geno admits. He’d liked the piece he’d taken, a Futurist sculpture, all golden motion and edges and curves. “Might keep it.”

“G…”

“Yeah?” Geno does turn to Sidney then, his eyebrows raised. Sidney makes a face, then subsides, then sets his jaw.

“Keeping anything is a risk.”

“What’s life without risk?” Geno retorts, and lets his legs fall farther apart, so his knee is brushing Sid’s. Sidney’s face doesn’t change, but it doesn’t have to for Geno to know he feels it. They’ve known each other too long for anything else.

“You’re going to get yourself caught one of these days,” Sid warns, turning on the stool so he’s facing Geno properly. The lights flash over his face, lighting up his high cheekbones, the strong jaw, his ridiculous eyelashes. His gaze is intense, though—focused. The electricity fizzes at the nape of Geno’s neck.

“Maybe,” he admits, because most thieves end up caught, in the end. You can’t live the life he does and think about that someday, though. He can’t be Sid, with his plans and plan Bs, spidering out from the center of his web. “But not today.”

“No.” Sid’s eyes glint, and he plucks the drink from Geno’s hand. Geno lets him, even though they both know that if he didn’t want Sidney to take the drink, he wouldn’t have. Even though they both know that Sidney knew that, and that he knew Geno would let him, and that’s the only reason why he did it. Sidney puts his mouth right over where Geno’s was, and takes a sip. “Today, I believe I was telling you how beautiful your job was.”

Sid is only subtle when he wants to be, and he rarely wants to be anymore, with Geno. He rarely needs to be, when he’s looking at Geno from under his lashes like that. They’ve known each other ten years too long for subtlety to matter.

“And I was telling you,” Geno replies, and gets up from his stool so he can slide closer to Sid, in between his legs. “That I knew you liked to watch.”

“Just watch?” Sidney asks, and licks his lips. “You know I do more than watch, G.”

“You do like to get your hands dirty, sometimes,” Geno agrees, his voice low, husky. Not quite the voice he uses on marks, but not far from it.

Sid lets out a huff of breath, then the drink’s on the table and Sidney’s standing up. “My hotel room is closer,” he announces, apparently done with the game. “Let’s go.”

It’s not like Geno didn’t know why Sidney was there—hell, probably why Sidney was in Madrid at all; last he’d heard Sid had been home in Canada running his jobs from his computer—but Geno still pouts a little. “You’re no fun,” he says, though he throws euros on the bar and follows Sid out of the bar.

Sid throws him a look over his shoulder, twisting in a way that somehow both stresses the breadth of his shoulders and curve of his ass, and grins, wicked. “Really? You’re going to say that now?”

“You’re always best when you have something to prove,” Geno explains, and slides ahead of Sidney so they can actually get to the hotel sometime soon. Sidney might be a world class criminal, but not even that could overcome his innate Canadian politeness.

Geno doesn’t doubt Sidney’s knowledge; if Sidney says his hotel is closer, it’s closer; if Sidney walks, it’s faster. Sid is many things, but patient without reason isn’t one of them; he doesn’t dangle people over fires. And Geno can tell from Sidney’s grip on his hand, from the way he steals looks at Geno as they walk, that he’s ready for this too.

It’s been a full three months since they’d last had sex, which isn’t anywhere near a record for them—Sid had had to lie low for a year once, after a close shave with Interpol, and hadn’t given Geno a way to contact him for none months of that—but it’s long enough that Geno’s ready for it. He’s had sex in those three months, of course, but—none of them were Sid, with his pouty lips and intense eyes and all the things Geno knows he can do.

He’s thinking about that when they get into the elevator, and up to Sid’s room—about halfway up, nothing too nice, unlike Geno’s penthouse, because Sid never did know how to spend the money he made. The elevator walls are all mirrors, throwing their reflections back at them a thousand times, and Sid looks up from where he was fiddling with his phone, over at Geno and smiles, smug like he does when a job’s fitting itself together, and Geno breaks.

He has Sid against the elevator wall in an instant, and Sid’s breathing out, “Yeah, Geno, please,” and tilting his head up as Geno kisses him, hard. Sid meets him, just as eager, just as intent, and no one kisses like Sid either, like his whole world has narrowed down to that kiss. Geno slides his hands down, around, gets his hands on Sid’s ass, which is always a marvel; Sid groans into Geno’s mouth then breaks away from it to nips at his jaw, down his neck, beneath his collar.

As much as Geno loves to show off, he also knows better than to get unnecessarily noticed. “Sid,” he warns, not letting go of Sid’s ass. “Cameras.”

“Turned them off,” Sid mutters, between kisses. “Didn’t want to wait for the room.”

God, Geno shouldn’t be so turned on by that. “Good,” he says, more of a growl then he meant, and grinds his already half-hard cock against Sid’s hip just to hear him moan.

Geno’s not sure if it’s more of Sid’s magic or their thieves’ luck, but they make it from the elevator to Sid’s hotel room without meeting anyone. Geno even gets to laugh at Sid for fumbling with the lock a little before he gets it open, then slams it shut and tugs Geno down onto the bed over him.

After, Geno lies on the bed and watches as Sid flips open his laptop, always weirdly energized by sex instead of having the proper lazy response. He’s been like that as long as Geno’s known him. Tanger claims it’s more evidence that he’s a terminator, when Geno whines-or-maybe-brags about it.

“You here for job?” he asks, stretching lazily, then staying stretched in case Sid looks at him.

He doesn’t. He’s still on his screen. “Yeah, I’ve got a quick thing with Flower at a collector’s.”

Geno ruthlessly pushes back any disappointment he might feel. He knew Sid didn’t come just for him; they didn’t do shit like that.

“Who?” he asks instead, sitting up and tucking himself against Sid’s back. He can’t follow half the shit Sid’s doing on the screen, of course, but he can follow it enough to get the gist. “Do I know them? Maybe I can give you some pointers before I leave.”  

“This job will take a little more finesse,” Sid retorts. “It’s not one of your little grabs.”  

“Not little,” Geno retorts, just as sharp. When Sid turns to glare at him, he glares back. Sidney might be whispers in some new thieves’ ears, part myth and part hero, but Geno remembers when he was a fluffy-haired MIT undergrad bored out of his mind in classes and living in a shitty apartment over a Chinese restaurant, before Mario found him and took him under his wing. And anyway, Geno could be a myth if he wanted to be. It just sounds like a lot of work.

Slowly, Sid softens. “No, you don’t do little,” he agrees. He doesn’t stop typing, but he does lean back, in Geno’s chest. Then he adds, quieter. “It can’t have any of your fingerprints on it, thought. They don’t know it’s you, but they’ll be on the alert for your MO.”  

Geno sighs. He isn’t stupid; he does know that. And he knows that Sid’s the best, and he won’t get caught. But the idea of being able to help and not doing it rubs at him wrong. “I know,” he admits, and noses at the hair behind Sid’s ear. “I leave this afternoon.”

“Good.”

“That’s not for hours,” Geno points out, and slides his hand around, to stroke the hair at Sid’s navel. Sid goes stiff, then relaxes.

“It’s not,” he agrees. A few more keystrokes, then he’s setting the computer aside again. He comes right back to Geno’s arms after, though, so Geno’s not complaining.

///

Geno kisses a still fucked-out looking Sid good-bye, gets out of Madrid, lays low for a while just in case, pulls a job with Sasha in D.C. for old times’ sake even if they bicker constantly and it ends with Geno swearing, as usual, to always work alone, then he pulls a job in Belgium that goes much more smoothly and confirms Geno’s resolution. He doesn’t know how Sid always works with people in his jobs. That sounds like a nightmare.  

He’s got a thing in San Diego when he hears through the grapevine that Sid’s in New York—and by grapevine, Geno means he asks Gonch, who Geno is fairly sure has trackers on everyone to make sure that they all call sometimes. It’s as good a stopping point as any; Geno buys a ticket to Montreal.

Like he expected, by the time he gets off the airplane, there’s a text from an unknown number with an address. Geno would be a lot more concerned about the fact that Sid keeps track of his movements so closely if he didn’t know that they both knew that if Geno ever went down, he was taking Sid with him.

Not that he thought Sid would ever turn him in. Sometime in the past ten years, Geno had started trusting Sid, which was a thought as terrifying as it was comforting. Especially as Geno’s fairly sure that the nebulous ‘sometime’ was about five minutes after the first time he’d seen Sid, standing alone at a Cambridge party looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there, and Geno had been bored and feeling superior to all these college kids who didn’t know what the real world was and so went over to talk to him because why not.

Geno takes an uber into Manhattan. The address Sid gave him is a nondescript office building; Sid didn’t give him a suite number, but he knows Sidney and the tells he hasn’t quite managed to get rid of and suite 87 is listed as Penguin industries. He presses the doorbell and is immediately buzzed in.

It’s noisier than he expected, when he gets to the door. There’s at least four people there, basically children even though Geno knows that he was younger than that when he got started.

“Are you Geno?” One of them asks, a boy with pink cheeks and big eyes. Geno doesn’t know any of them, but he guesses they’re more of the protégés Sid picks up like stray dogs.

“Yes,” he tells the one who talks. “Where’s Sid?” He doesn’t ask about the others, even as they all give him big-eyed looks. He doesn’t particularly want to know.

“In the back.” The guys gestures to a room set off from the main space. “Are you in on this too?”

Geno snorts. “Thanks,” he tells the guy, and heads to the back. He doesn’t knock before he opens the door.

“Sid, you adopt more and not say?” he ass, as he pushes the door open. “Thought we—” Sidney’s at his computer, and a big blonde guy his leaning over his shoulder, one hand on the back of Sid’s chair and the other only a few—well, maybe fifteen or so, but who’s counting—centimeters away from his keyboard. Geno freezes. Only for a second, though; he’s enough of a grafter for that. “Sorry, not know you in meeting.”

“Hey, G.” Sid looks up from the computer, gives him a quick smile. “I’m not, just one second. Nate,” he goes on, to the other guy. “See what I’m saying. You can’t just send your hitter in, he needs—”

“Yeah, I see.” The guy sighs, and straightens up. “I’ll see if we can get some covers? So they’ll be there for a distraction?”

“That’d work, probably,” Sid agrees. “Let me know what you find out.”

“I will.” Nate grins at Sidney, big and open. Geno doesn’t like him. “Thanks again for coming out.”

“Of course.” Sid goes the slight shade of pink he gets when people he cares about start praising him. Then he looks away, at Geno. “I didn’t know you were coming in? I thought you were doing that other thing.”

“Am. Thought I’d stop by.” Geno raises his eyebrows and glances around. “Didn’t know you’d be so busy.”

“Oh, I’m not.” Sidney pushes back the chair and gets to his feet. He pats Nate idly on the shoulder as he passes. “I’m just doing some consulting.”

“You’re Geno?” Nate asks, and at least it’s said in the right tone, Geno thinks, probably more meanly than he should. “Dude, it’s great to finally meet you.”

“Finally?” Geno asks. He takes the hand Nate offers, and exerts maybe a little more strength than he has to. Nate’s a big guy, he can clearly take it.

“Well, yeah. Sid talks about you all the time. I think Erik’s getting jealous.”

“Really? He didn’t say anything about you.”

“G,” Sid interrupts, rolling his eyes.

Nate just laughs, though. “That’s because he has better things to do with you, I hear,” he says, clearly teasing, and Sid goes pink again. “You’re heading out then?” he asks Sid.

Sid makes a face. “I mean, if you think you need me—”

“We’ll be fine until tomorrow.”

“Yes, Sid.” Geno throws an arm around Sid’s shoulders, draws him in. “They’ll be fine.” 

Given the look Sid shoots at him, Geno’s not fooling anyone. He doesn’t really care. If he’d wanted to fool people, he would be fooling them—maybe not Sid, but this kid, definitely.

He also doesn’t care, because it gets Sid out of the office building and into an uber to his hotel—where they obviously can’t talk, so chat about mutual acquaintances and Geno gets to hear all about Flower’s new daughter—then into the hotel room, where Geno spends a lot of time sucking a mark into Sid’s neck so obviously that he won’t be able to go into the field anytime soon without it being a clear giveaway.

Sid pokes at it after in the mirror, and gives Geno’s reflection a skeptical look that Geno doesn’t bother looking smug about. Sid looks very good, with his mark bruised into him.

“G,” Sid says, terribly gentle. “Do we have to talk about this?”

Geno would really rather not talk about this. Geno has rather not been talking about this for ten years, since Sid had cut off his stammering attempt at asking him to dinner-drinks-whatever normal people did for dates with a laugh and a, ‘yeah, we should do this again sometime’ before herding him out of the apartment. “What are you doing with the kids?” he asks instead of bringing any of that, up because that’s a decade gone and Geno doesn’t look back.

“Nate’s leading his first job, he wanted to bring me in to help him get set up and consult,” Sid answers, looking relieved that they don’t have to talk about feelings. He wanders back over to the bed, still shamelessly naked. Geno’s not exactly objecting. “It’s weird, working with all these kids. Were we ever that green?”

“Me? No.” Geno’s not sure he had been, really; he doesn’t remember a time when the adrenaline rush of the score wasn’t in his sights. “You—yes. Most green,” he adds, and ruffles Sid’s hair now that he’s close enough. Sid bats him away, but settles back into bed without comment, though he’s brought his phone back to the nightstand. “So innocent.”

“Not that innocent,” Sid retorts, and Geno laughs and nudges him.

“Yes, you hacked Swiss national bank at fifteen, I know.”

Sid smirks at him. “Not actually what I was talking about, but that works too.”

“Sid!” Geno claps his hands to his chest like an outraged grandma. “You talking about fucking?”

Sid goes pink again. Geno resists the urge to pinch his cheek, or to kiss it. “I’m saying, that when we met you have proof I wasn’t innocent.”

Geno does, sort of. He remembers that Sid, fumbling and earnest—neither of them with any real clue of what to do, but so delighted in each other’s bodies. It’s a far cry from this Sid, confident and competent in his body and career both, but he’s fond of both versions. “Okay, you sex dynamo at nineteen.”

Sid makes a face. “Please don’t say sex dynamo ever again. You need to stop hanging out with Ovechkin.”

“Trust me, I won’t anytime soon.”

“That bad?” Sid asks. 

“Worse,” Geno groans. He flops back onto the bed, then wriggles around so that his head’s resting on Sid’s thigh. It’s quite a thigh; Geno likes it as a pillow. “Why do you work with people so often?” he demands. “It’s awful.”

“Well, we can’t all be as good as you,” Sid teases. One of his hands is combing through Geno’s hair absently, the same sort of idly motion that he sometimes makes at his keyboard. “Some of us need partners if we’re going to grift.”

Geno snorts. Sid’s inability to grift is pretty legendary—enough that even Sid has stopped insisted he try. Geno had once watched some surveillance tape of Sid trying and laughed so hard he cried. Sid gives him a lopsided smile in return. “And you can do more, with more people. More hands. There are some things you can’t do alone.”

Geno very nobly doesn’t make the sex joke he’s thinking about, because Sid is looking at him seriously. “You could lead a team, you know,” Sid tells him, with that earnestness he’s never quite lost. “You’re definitely good enough.”

“I leave that to you.” Geno pats Sid on the shin, which is the closest part he can reach. “I like to steal. Not lead.”

Sid’s face makes it clear he’s not going to let this go, but he does right now. “Where are you off to next?”

“San Diego. You?”

“Not sure.” Geno pokes at Sid. “What?”

“Making sure you not Sidney-bot. You don’t have a plan for what you’re doing next? Are you sick?”

Sid rolls his eyes. “I’m fine. I just… I don’t know. They’re so young, the kids here. So eager for the score. I don’t know if I remember being that happy.”

“You were,” Geno tells him, because he remembers Sid after his first score—lit up and literally tackling him to the bed, nearly vibrating with the joy of it. But now he sounds tired. Geno takes a deep breath, but he has to ask. “You thinking of getting out?” It’s inconceivable. Sidney’s the best; that he would just leave at the peak of his game isn’t something Geno’s ever considered. He’s refused to consider it. If Sidney gets out, what would they have left? What excuse would Geno have, to wander into Sidney’s bed? To wander into his life.

“No.” Sid says it like it’s obvious, so that’s something. “No, but…”

“You thinking too much,” Geno decides, and rolls over, pushes himself up. “Bad habit, Sid. Need to stop.”

“If I stop thinking, what use would I be?” Sid asks.

“Could put mouth to lots of use,” Geno leers, and Sid’s laughing again as he kisses him.

///

Geno leaves Sid to Nate and his kids and goes to San Diego. The job there takes a few weeks, and Geno spends it hooking up with a blonde, blue eyed girl with a sly laugh and an artist’s itchy feet. That done, he bids her a fond but not regretful farewell and goes back home to Russia to see his parents. His mama always complains that he doesn’t come home enough. But this time he brings her back some of diamonds the stories claim a Tsarina owned once, so she’s happy about that—and about the stories he brings back about his scores.

He carefully edits around Sid. Not because his parents wouldn’t approve—they know of and approve of Sidney as a person (and, maybe more importantly, as a thief), and Geno’s sexuality as a concept—but because his parents wouldn’t understand what he and Sid have, the everything and nothing of it. Their love story was one for the ages, of two thieves meeting in a darkened museum and falling in love on the spot. They want that for Geno, too. They don’t get that he’s still young, or he feels it; that he still wants the rush and the win more than anything. Sid might be tired, but Geno isn’t.

After Russia, he goes to London, then to Calcutta. He goes out in each city, dances and drinks and buys expensive toys just to give them away, because it’s the buying that’s the fun of it, not the having. He flirts and fucks and washes the feeling of Sid from his skin, until he can hardly remember it. Or at least, until he can lie to himself that he doesn’t remember it.

Then, inexorable as a rubber band stretched too tight, he finds himself on a plane for Montreal.

He gets the text midair, when he’s messing around on the plane’s wifi. An address, and a _you really need to let me to get you more secure phones_

_Like you don’t already encrypt mine?_

Sid doesn’t reply to that, which Geno takes as a victory.

It’s a house he pulls up in front of—a nice house in the suburbs, not one of the places Sid sometimes buys because buying’s easier than renting for longer jobs. This is a house with a bike in the front yard and a minivan in the garage, and Geno double-checks the address before he rings the doorbell.

“Hey, G.” It’s Flower who answers—of course. Geno should have put it together. “Sid said you were coming, come on in.”

“This your house?” Geno asks, looking around. It looks lived in, with evidence of babies and dogs and having a life in a place. It makes Geno’s feet itch. “I’d have been more careful if I’d known, sorry.”

“We have precautions, don’t worry about it.” Flower takes Geno’s jacket, rolls his suitcase against a wall. “Come on, Sid’s playing with his goddaughter.”

“Thought he was here for a job,” Geno starts, following Flower down the hall. “I didn’t want to interrupt—”

“Shut up,” Flower interrupts. “You’re always welcome here, G.” He pauses, so he can look Geno in the eyes, sincere like Flower rarely lets himself be. “After everything you’ve done for me and for Sid, you’re always welcome in my home.”

Geno swallows. He doesn’t—he hasn’t done anything for them, really. Flower he’s given a tip to here or there. Sid, he—well, he fucks Sid sometimes. He’s Sid’s friend. He’s not sure it deserves that level of gratitude.

“Where’s Sid?” he asks, and Flower laughs.

“One track mind, wow. He’s through here.”

He leads the way down a hall and through a kitchen that opens into a carpeted area in front of a fireplace. Sid’s sitting cross legged in front of a lit fire, making faces at a baby in his lap. His hair is longer than it has been since Geno met him, curling down to the nape of his neck, and he’s in simple jeans and a sweater with a dog curled up against his thigh. Geno’s heart does the thing it did ten years ago, when a boy with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks told him, offhand, about what he did for fun.

Flower chuckles, low in his throat, and Sid turns at the sound, smiles. “Hey, G!” he says, and waves the hand the baby’s clutching a thumb of. “I don’t encrypt your phones, by the way. They’re too shitty for that.”

“You’re the worst liar,” Geno informs him, wandering closer to him. Sid glances up at him from under his lashes, still grinning—and it’s not like the looks he gives when he’s trying to be seductive, or when he’s got a plan. It’s just Sid.

Geno pushes that aside, and leans down. “And who is this pretty lady?” he asks.

“This is Scarlett,” Sid says, waving the hand again.

“Privyet, Scarlett.” Geno wraps his hand around Sid and Scarlett’s hands, and shakes them. Sid’s skin is warm beneath his. Sid beams at him. Geno had thought he’d seen him happy, that first score. This is close to that, and that’s another thought for Geno to push aside.

They play with the baby for another hour or so—or Sid plays with the baby as Geno watches and chats with Flower, with some input from Sid—before Flower’s wife—“Oh, you’re Geno! I’m Vero, I’m so pleased to meet you!” comes home from work and Flower announces dinner.

Geno eats mechanically, watches. Sid obviously does this often; he fits into the family routine with the ease of an old friend, helping with the girls and dishing food when Vero and Flower are occupied with their children. Geno’s not even sure what he’s doing here.

“So, Sid,” Vero says, sometime during the chaos. “How’s Marsha doing? Are you still talking to her?”

“Um.” Sid darts a glance at Geno, which gives away in an instant just who Marsha is. Or what. Geno takes a long sip of wine. He knew Sid dated, when he wasn’t around, like he slept with people. He never expected any differently. “No, we didn’t work out, really.”

“Psh.” Vero makes a very French sound. “It never works out. This man,” she tells Geno, whose knuckles are turning white on his fork. “He likes to pretend he is all, run around, steal things, all that, but then he comes and steals my children.”

“I never stole them!” Sid protests. He’s not looking at Geno.

Flower is. “You come close, though,” he says. “You know, you can have kids and still be in the life.”

“When you have a superhuman wife,” Sid retorts, and Vero laughs and blows him a kiss.

The conversation moves on—Sid and Flower are coming off a job in Thailand, apparently, and Sid has some questions about the London job that wraps Geno up in telling of his daring tenth story escape. Then it’s bedtime for the girls, and Flower takes them upstairs while Vero does the dishes, so it’s only then that Geno gets a chance to lean in close to Sid, let his hand settle on Sid’s thigh. It’s grounding, somehow. A familiar sort of touch, with this unfamiliar Sid.

“Where you staying?” he murmurs in Sid’s ear.

Sid turns to him, surprised, even as his hand comes to cover Geno’s. “Here? They’ve got plenty of guest rooms.”

Somehow that never occurred to Geno. “Here? You want me to stay with you here?”

“You were coming to Montreal, and I’m staying here.” Sid’s jaw is setting, and he’s getting the dangerously stubborn look in his eyes that comes when he’s gearing up for a fight. “If you don’t want to stay with me, you can leave again.”

Geno’s hand tightens on Sid’s, reflexively. He doesn’t want to leave. He only just got to see Sid, and not all to himself yet. It’s been months. He’s not ready to leave yet.

Sid’s jaw relaxes a fraction. “It’s on the other side of the house from them,” he says, edging on a purr. “In-law suite. Don’t worry, no one’s hearing anything.”

Geno hums, and turns his head into Sid’s hair.

He’d forgotten how much he loved Sid’s hair long like this, but he remembers later, his fingers twined in it as Sid blows him, then later still, as he rubs it between his fingers as he lies in bed and Sid checks his phone. It softens his face, makes him look less like the criminal mastermind he is and more like someone who might live next door.

“You are thinking of leaving, then?” Geno asks quietly.

“Is this about what Vero said?” Sid replies, mostly distracted. “Because she just likes to set me up.”

“I see how you look at Scarlett and Estelle. You want kids.”

“Yeah, someday.” Sid sets his phone down. “Not yet.”

“Even though your baby thieves tired you out?”

“I think you were the one who did that,” Sid retorts, and Geno grins smugly back at him, but he won’t let himself be distracted.

“Sid. Something’s been up, lately. What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Sidney tips his head back, into Geno’s hand. “I thought I’d do this forever, you know? Do jobs, steal things for the game of it. Eventually I’d find someone to come home to, hand have kids, and when I was as old as Mario I’d retire and start mentoring kids.”

Because Geno is a good grifter, and because Sid’s not quite looking at him, he manages not to ask how he’d fit into that. How he’d work in with that eventual person, who apparently wouldn’t be Geno because he’d found Geno ten years ago, and had sent him on his way again. 

Instead, he prompts. “But?”

“But…it’s not as fun anymore. I love it, and I’m good at it, but—it doesn’t feel quite so much like winning.” Sid makes a face. “I don’t know. I’m probably overthinking.”

“You’re always overthinking,” Geno agrees. “I could help with that.”

“You always do.” Sid turns to him, and smiles, and Geno can’t quite look at Sid looking at him like that, so he kisses him instead, long and slow. Sid breaks away, still smiling a little. “I wish I could be more like you,” he admits. “Just—living life. Going. Not thinking ahead.”

“It’s easy.” Geno rolls over, so he’s propped up over Sid, a hand on either side of his head. Sid looks perfectly relaxed under him, solid and strong, with his eyes like all the gold Geno wants to steal in the world. He looks at Geno, and Geno looks at him, and Geno wants to hold onto this moment forever. “What do you want, right now?”

“Um—”

“No thinking. What do you want?”

“You,” Sid says, quick as can be. Then adds, smirking. “And maybe to have stolen the Mona Lisa, just for fun.”

“I’ll steal you the Mona Lisa,” Geno mutters, because he’s a brat and Geno doesn’t have any choice but to kiss him again.

Geno ends up falling asleep next to Sid. He doesn’t usually, but it happens. He wakes up sprawled over Sidney, his face buried in Sidney’s neck. He smells like sweat and Sid, the same thing he’s smelled of for the past ten years, and Geno’s warm and comfortable, in this pretty house with the two babies sleeping down the hall.

He eases himself away from Sid, and goes to the en suite to shower. When he gets out, he goes back into the bedroom. Sid’s still asleep in the same position. His hair’s messy from Geno’s hands, and his lips are very pink in the morning light.

Geno shakes his head, and goes to the suitcase to get dressed.

He’s packing away his toiletries when he hears the movement of the bed. “You’re leaving, then,” Sid says. It’s not a question.

Geno keeps packing. “Yeah.”

“Flower’ll be sad to see you go.”

“Just Flower?” Geno asks, turning. Sid’s sitting up in bed, the blankets around his hips. Marks from Geno’s hands still linger on his shoulders.

“I don’t expect you to stay,” Sid replies, like he’d told Nate, ‘you’ll need backup’, like he plans his jobs. Everything falling into place like he expects.

“That’s not an answer,” Geno points out.

Sid sighs. “It might as well be.”

“No, it’s not,” Geno snaps. He’s suddenly angry. What they’d had had been so good. Why was Sid changing things on him? Why did Sid want things to change? Sid wasn’t supposed to change. “It’s a cop out.”

Sid spreads his hands, all innocence except for the bite in his eyes. “What do you want me to say, G? I’ll miss you? You know I will.”

Geno didn’t know, really—or he wasn’t sure, not a hundred percent—but that doesn’t matter, when his fighting spirit’s up. “I don’t stay in one place long. I don’t stay.” Sid knows that. He can’t be mad about that.

“You did once.” Sid looks up, and Geno has a sudden, visceral memory—coming to the address Mario had given him, and Sid alone in his darkened house, pale and smaller than Geno had ever seen him. Geno had stayed then, because how could he leave when Sid looked like that? 

“You needed me to.”

“Yeah,” Sid agrees, more resigned then sad. Not even annoyed at admitting that he’d needed someone.

Geno throws his hands in the air, because fuck this. Sid’s the one who kicked him out. Sid’s the one who set this status quo. “Do you want me to stay?” he demands. “I’ll stay if you want me to.”

“Geno,” Sid sighs again, but his temper’s kindling too.

“You say I’m always leaving, so—I’ll stay. If you ask me.” Geno holds his hands out wide, opening himself. If Sid wants him—fuck, it’s what he wanted when he was twenty-one and stupid, wasn’t it? Sid letting him stay. And he’s not going to let Sid just talk to him like that, like he’s one of Sid’s stupid protégés.

Sid’s jaw is set and his eyes are alight, and he pushes himself up onto the bed in a single surge of power that usually makes Geno’s mouth go dry, when’s he’s not so angry, so that he’s on his knees. He’s still not as tall as Geno, but it puts him closer. “Okay,” he snaps. “Stay. Stay here with me.”

“Fine! I will.” Geno shoves his suitcase away from him, and reaches for the buttons of his jacket.

“Stay here,” Sid keeps going, his eyes fixed on Geno and so, so knowing. “We’ll get a house in the suburbs and have a few kids and I’ll get a security consultant job and you can take up knitting.” Geno can picture it, in Sid’s words—kissing Sid good morning and making breakfast for the kids and going off to some boring job and coming home and probably having boring sex, rinse and repeat. The walls feel very small around him.

Sid snorts. “God, you look like someone shot you just thinking about it! No, actually, I’ve seen you after you got shot, you look worse than that. You can’t even work with a team for a job, how would you ever manage a life like that?” 

He’s not wrong, and Geno hates that, hates that Sid knows him so well.

“Well you don’t want that either!” Geno shouts back.  

“Not right now, but someday! We can’t keep doing this forever. There has to be an exit plan.”

“That’s not right now!”

“You know I can’t live like that!” Sid yells, then closes his hands into fists next to his thighs, takes a deep breath. When he talks again, his voice is quieter, wrapped in that iron will that had shaped him into who he was. “You know I can’t live just for the right now. And I know that you do, and that’s fine, you’re allowed to leave, to do what you want. But you can’t do that and keep on with your whole…” he waves a hand, and Geno knows what he means, but he wants to be cruel.

“My whole what?” he prompts.

Sid glares. “Acting like a possessive dick. Staking a claim. I’m not going to try to make you stay, but you don’t get to expect me to wait around for you, either.”

“You were the one who started this!” Geno grabs at his hair, because it’s that or punch something, and Sid might be able to take a punch but Geno would never, ever lay a hand on him. “You didn’t want anything—you said we should just be friends!”

“Yeah, when I was twenty. That was ten years ago, G. Things have changed. I’ve changed.” He says it so simply, and the implication is so clear—he’s changed, but Geno hasn’t. But Geno’s still living in the moment like a careless teenager, like that’s a bad thing. Like he doesn’t expect anything more of Geno, and he’d known all along this would happen.

“Didn’t change that much,” Geno spits at him. “You’re still an asshole.” He scoops up his suitcase and turns on his heel. Sid doesn’t look surprised. It makes him want to pick inside Sid, get past that bland face—to stab into his soft underbelly and make him hurt like Geno is hurting. So, “By the way,” he adds, his hand on the doorknob, looking over his shoulder at Sid. “I’d have stayed if you’d asked me that first night. I’d have stayed forever, for you.” He laughs, cruel. “I’d have done just about anything for you.”

For an instant, Sid’s face looks like a man’s does when a knife slid into his back, before it closes off into something cold, resigned and blank. Then Geno lets the door close behind him, and is out of the house before Flower or Vero can waylay him.

///

He’s on a place three hours later, going west. LA, he thinks; someplace anonymous where he can have some fun. There’s always a gala or two there to do a job at.

He sits on the plane—first class, of course—and stares out the window. What the hell was Sid thinking, throwing that on him like that? He can’t stop thinking about it—about Sid’s exasperated sigh, like Geno was being difficult. Geno knew what they were doing, what they had been doing for ten fucking years. Sid was his friend, probably his best friend, at this point, and the sex was great, and Geno felt—well, what Geno felt didn’t really matter, because as soon as Geno thinks about anything more it feels like prison doors slamming shut. Sid’s the one who sits at the center of his web, with his network of ties and favors, who tugs on strings to make things happen. Geno can’t be tied like that. Geno works alone, and he lives by his wits and his luck, and that’s what he wants.

Except—it’s not like Sid’s tied down, either. Sid had talked a lot of shit about change, about being tired, but Sid loves the game. Geno knows Sid better than anyone, and Sid had run away from a boring life and never looked back. Sid had said he wasn’t leaving like he couldn’t imagine another answer. Sid might have his friends and his family, but he’s on the move as much as Geno is. He’d hate a normal life, like the one he’d sketched out. He’d hate that now and he’d hate that later. Sid’s smart and he doesn’t lie to himself, he knows that.

Geno drums his fingers over his phone—the phone that he knows Sid always has a track on, that Sid absolutely encrypts and probably has since they met. Like Geno’s never more than a phone call away, if Sid ever got himself into trouble he couldn’t think himself out of. Ten years of this. Ten years, and Geno’s never gotten far from Sid. He might leave, but he’s kidding himself if it would ever be for good.

Sid thought he knew everything—had had the fight all sketched out before it had even started. And Geno had fallen into his trap. But he’s done with dancing to Sid’s tune.

The plane touches down in L.A. Geno immediately ditches the phone, and buys a burner.

///

He goes about this carefully. Plans the job like he would any other. He gets the cash for the plane ticket through petty lifts, so it’s untraceable; ditches his burner phone every few hours. Gonch thinks he’s crazy, but Gonch also is under pain of no more babysitting favors to not tell Sid what he’s doing, so Geno doesn’t think he can rely on his judgment.

Sid might be a myth, the best at what he does, but Geno’s only not a myth because he doesn’t want to be, and he’s the best thief in the world.

It all makes Sid’s face, when he comes into his study to find Geno sitting at the desk, really satisfying.

“Fuck, Geno!” Sid swears, and drops his hand from his pocket, where he’d clearly been ready to activate whatever panic button he has installed. “What are you doing here? How’d you get in?”

“What do you want?” Geno demands. He’s still sitting in Sid’s chair, his feet propped up on his desk. It’s a nice chair, a nice desk. Ten years, and Geno’s never been here before, but he could have guessed this is where Sid went—he always talked about the lake like it was heaven, and Geno remembers when he was buying the house, his first big purchase with his first score, how excited he was. It’s a nice house—very Sid, from what Geno had seen getting in here. He runs his hand over the mouse Sidney had on the desk.

“What do you mean?” Sid asks. Geno can see him thinking, planning—but Geno’s taken him by surprise. It sets something off in Geno, something dark and deep.

“I mean, you don’t want the house in the suburbs.” Geno swings his legs off the desk so he can get to his feet. Sid’s stays still in the doorway, tracking his motions. “And you don’t want what’s happening now. So what do you want, Sid?”

“I—” Sid cuts off as Geno paces forward, the slow prowl that always intimidates. Sid knows that, and his tongue flicks out to wet his lips. “G, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Monaco.”

Geno allows himself a small pat on the back for that. “I wanted to surprise you,” he says, and smiles, not very nice. “Why haven’t you ever asked me to stay?”

“I told you, because you wouldn’t.”

“Sid.” Geno slides his hand up, to Sid’s neck, so he can tilt his chin up to look at him. Sid just—lets him, without hesitation, and there’s something so heady about that. They both know what Geno’s done, and Sid still doesn’t hesitate to let Geno get his hands around Sid’s throat. “You’re still a bad liar.”

Sid flushes. He doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t deny what they both know, what Geno should have said at Flower’s, if he wasn’t so angry and Sid wasn’t trying to distract him: that they’ve had a hold on each other for years, and if Sid had asked, Geno would have tried. 

Sid bites at his lip, and for a second, he looks like the twenty-year-old kid Geno had first met. Then he blinks, and lifts his gaze to meet Geno’s eyes, and he’s entirely the Sid of now. “I don’t know what I want,” he says, and there’s no lie in it. “I don’t know, and that’s scary as fuck, but—” he shrugs. “I know you’re in it. That’s all. And if I asked, you would—it would make you go. I know you, G. Anything that looks like a chain, and you slip it and run.” Sid’s eyes are golden as he looks up at Geno through his lashes, the one jewel Geno’s never known how to steal. “I wasn’t going to risk that.”

“Sid,” Geno breathes, and his other hand joins the first, cupping Sid’s cheek. “Ask.”

“You’re going to—”

“I decide what I’m going to do,” Geno cuts him off. “You’re very smart, but you’re not smarter than me.”

To his surprise, Sid grins at that, a sudden bark of laughter. “No, I’m not,” he admits, easier than Geno’s ever heard him admit something like that before. “G—Evgeni,” he corrects, in his sloppy but passable accent. “Stay with me? Wherever we go, for as long as you can?”

It’s less than Geno was hoping for. More than he’d dreamed of getting. “Yes,” he agrees and leans down, presses his lips to Sid’s, like the sealing of an oath. “And if I go, I’ll always come back,” he promises, in the air between their lips.

Sid’s lips curve into a smile. “Good.” His hands, which had been clenched at his side, come up to Geno’s hips, tuck into his belt loops so he can tug him closer. “As long as you stay tonight.”

“Hopefully, we’ll stay somewhere with a bed,” Geno replies, all innocence. Sid smirks, and takes a step back, pulling Geno with him.

“I have a bed here.”

“Really?” Geno exclaims in mock surprise, and then Sid’s kissing him and he’s distracted.

///

Sid’s bed is very nice—better than the hotel beds they’ve fucked in before. Or maybe it’s better because Geno sucks marks into Sid’s thighs, his collarbone, and doesn’t care who sees; maybe it’s because Sid’s fingers dig into his hips hard enough to leave bruises and it feels like a promise instead of a brand.

They fuck, and Geno falls asleep and when he wakes up, Sid’s not there. Geno wishes he was surprised, but Sid has never had romance in his soul and has probably gone to run a marathon.

He hasn’t. Instead, he’s in the kitchen, something simmering on the stove as he stands shirtless at the counter and works on one of the laptops that litter the house with the other half. Geno prods at the sight like he might a loose tooth, to see if it hurts, or makes him want to cut and run. It doesn’t, not yet—unless the running is back to bed, because Sid standing around in low-slung MIT sweats that have to be ten years old is really working for him. Maybe it will, soon; probably it will, if he stays in these four walls too long. But not yet, and it’s the walls that close in, not Sid.

“Thought you disappeared,” Geno complains, coming in to sit at one of the high stools at the island next to Sid.

Sid grins. “Nah, just got bored, thought I’d start on a late dinner. And then…” he gestures to the computer, which he doesn’t have to explain because Geno’s always known he’s a workaholic. The screen’s open to what looks like real estate in Pittsburgh.

Something’s flickering in the corners of his eyes, though; a smile he can’t hide. And he looks energized, from more than just sex. “Sid? What are you planning?”

“Me?” Sid smirks, utterly unable to pretend otherwise.

“I know that face.” Geno stabs a finger at it. Sid bats it away. “What’s the job?”

“It’s not a job. It’s an idea.” Sid’s eyes are bright and he almost bounces, with the thought of it.

“In Pittsburgh? With Mario?”

“I’ll talk to Mario, but this is going to be me.”

“What’s the job?” Geno presses. He hasn’t heard of anything big in Pittsburgh, and if there was anything going down, that was Mario’s town.

“It’s not a job.” Sid taps something on the computer, pulls up a spreadsheet. “It’s—you know how I’ve been getting…tired, with the game?”

“Yes?”

“Well. I was thinking. If the game’s not enough—maybe I can use it for good. Play the game for stakes that matter, you know?” Geno doesn’t know, really—he likes the stakes—but he nods anyway. “So, I thought, we’ve got all these skills, why don’t we use them to help people? People who can’t go to the law, or who the law won’t help. Give them a little, I don’t know. Leverage.”

Geno has to smile—it’s such a Sid idea. Sid, who always did want to help. A way to stay in the game and change it too.

Sid’s still talking, though, wired with his plans. “I’ll have to put a team together, of people I can trust, but I think I can get them. Flower, if only when Vero can spare him, and Tanger, and Kessel if I can convince him, and maybe some of the younger guys, on a provisional basis.” Sid’s brain’s ticking along, spinning out plans and people and a whole enterprise at his fingers, and Geno could never leave this, not for long.

“Sid?” he interrupts Sid’s musing about how to get the word out. “Will the team have room for the world’s best thief?”

Sid blinks at him. “Are you sure?” he asks, gentle in that irritatingly condescending way of his. “I’m not asking. I know you don’t like to work with teams.”

Geno doesn’t. But he thinks about having Sid’s voice in his ear, not just having a good guess that he’s watching but knowing it. Thinks about knowing Sid’s on a team without him, with subpar people to watch his back. And it’s Sid; if he trusts anyone to plan a job and see it through, it’s Sid.

 “I’m sure,” he says, and realizes he means it.

Sid’s smile could light up the sun. “Well, like I said, Flower’s not going to be there all the time, so I don’t know what you’re asking, but—”

Geno yanks him in to cut him off with a kiss, and Sid’s still laughing as he wraps his arms around Geno’s neck to kiss him back.

He doesn’t let go until they’re both well-kissed, Sid’s eyes a little glazed in a way that makes Geno feel ten feet tall. Of course, he immediately turns around, so he can get at his computer.

Geno wraps an arm around Sid’s waist, and rests his face against Sid’s temple, so he can see the screen too. Sid’s always far too cheap; he’ll have to help correct for that. “Leverage?” he hums, tasting it on his lips. “I like the sound of that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Liked it? Want to talk about it? Comment or come chat on [ tumblr!](http://fanforthefics.tumblr.com/)


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